Effects analysis of bias and excitation conditions on power output of an environmental vibration energy harvesting device using Fe-Ga slice

Abstract

With the advent of low power VLSI designs and the mass manufacture of CMOS, the power consumption of wireless sensor nodes has been significantly reduced from mW to μW. This opens up a new and interesting research field, that is, the possibility of converting environmental vibration energy to electrical energy for supplying power to the sensors. In this paper, using magnetostrictive materials slice, that is Fe-Ga alloy, a device for harvesting environmental vibration energy is designed and tested. Compared with piezoelectric materials and Terfenal-D alloy, Fe-Ga alloy offers excellent properties for surviving in tough ambient vibration conditions, including higher energy conversion efficiency, longer life cycles, excellent toughness, reduced depolarization and higher flexibility, etc. The designing of vibration energy harvesting process is based on the coupling characteristics of magnetostrictive inverse effect and Faraday electromagnetic induction. The device consists of a Fe-Ga alloy cantilever beam with a magnetostrictive direction throughout the length. It has magnetostrictive inverse effect during vibration and the internal magnetization state will change. A cantilever beam is surrounded by a pickup coil and voltage is induced due to the magnetic field according to Faraday's law. The energy conversion principle among mechanical, magnetic and electric energy is described through a dynamic equation of motion and in conjunction with an electromagnetic conversion equation. The influence law of bias and excitation conditions on output voltage, power and other characteristics of device are investigated in comprehensive experiments. By knowing these influence laws, it is possible to choose an appropriate number of pick up coil for a definite load resistance, to set an appropriate working frequency range, pre-tightening force and pre-magnetized magnetic field such that a maximum power can be harvested. The results derived here can be used as a design guideline for future studies in optimal design and the modeling of vibration energy harvester and force sensor.